So I recently made a thread about which SSD to get for my new Lenovo X201 lappy, and I ended up going with the cheapest option for a 128GB, the Kingston SSDNow V using the jmicron JMF618 controller.
After using this for a week to process thousands of photos and do general things, I have to say that it's an awesome drive. Things just HAPPEN.
Photoshop CS5 loads in 3 seconds.
Dreamweaver CS5 in 2.5 seconds.
Lightroom 3 loads in 4 seconds, but this is loading up my complete workflow from when I closed it along with all the previews of the hundreds of photos in that particular workflow.
Cycling through images in Lightroom to check that they look right is much quicker than on my rotaries.
My friend has a $2000 beast of a lappy from Asus with a 500GB 7200RPM HDD and PS CS5 loaded in 15 seconds for him. It was only after he loaded it over and over and had it in prefetch that it got to 4 seconds, and prefetching all this data when Windows boots just means that his boot times will be longer. Windows bootup for me is so fast that I don't mind restarting the computer now after I install something.
I have noticed hard locks every now and then though. They happen only about once a day for a second at a time, so the jmicron controller on this thing isn't perfect. But for the cheapest SSD at 128GB and with such a ridiculous performance increase from rotary drives, it's hardly an issue. For what I use it for, the SSDNow is plenty. If I spend $350 or $400 for a higher end SSD and controller I may shave 0.5 or 1 second off loading times, but I don't see that as being worth it.
After using this for a week to process thousands of photos and do general things, I have to say that it's an awesome drive. Things just HAPPEN.
Photoshop CS5 loads in 3 seconds.
Dreamweaver CS5 in 2.5 seconds.
Lightroom 3 loads in 4 seconds, but this is loading up my complete workflow from when I closed it along with all the previews of the hundreds of photos in that particular workflow.
Cycling through images in Lightroom to check that they look right is much quicker than on my rotaries.
My friend has a $2000 beast of a lappy from Asus with a 500GB 7200RPM HDD and PS CS5 loaded in 15 seconds for him. It was only after he loaded it over and over and had it in prefetch that it got to 4 seconds, and prefetching all this data when Windows boots just means that his boot times will be longer. Windows bootup for me is so fast that I don't mind restarting the computer now after I install something.
I have noticed hard locks every now and then though. They happen only about once a day for a second at a time, so the jmicron controller on this thing isn't perfect. But for the cheapest SSD at 128GB and with such a ridiculous performance increase from rotary drives, it's hardly an issue. For what I use it for, the SSDNow is plenty. If I spend $350 or $400 for a higher end SSD and controller I may shave 0.5 or 1 second off loading times, but I don't see that as being worth it.